Armory party will go on

Updated 9:18 pm, Friday, October 26, 2012

ALBANY — The fright fest will go on Saturday night at the Washington Avenue Armory, where a fight last week that injured three police officers spurred a city zoning crackdown nearly leading to its cancellation and postponing a Friday night event.

The Festival of the Dead, a Halloween bash that benefits the Family Trauma Fund at Albany Medical Center, will be held thanks to a last minute deal between the historic venue and the city, a spokesman for the armory said Friday afternoon.

The Halloween event, billed as "the mother of all Halloween parties," is expected to draw 1,200 to 1,500 attendees and raise $10,000 for Albany Medical Center.

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"We've been working with the city all week trying to remedy some of their concerns," said Michael Corts, the venue's spokesman. "We did remedy some and are in the process of addressing others."

Late Friday afternoon, the venue was granted a temporary stay on a cease-and-desist order handed over to the armory on Thursday. Friday night's a "Masquerave" party scheduled at the armory was postponed until Nov. 30. City officials had initially offered little hope that they would relent from their threats to pull the plug on Saturday evening's Halloween party, citing "health and safety" concerns.

The cease-and-desist order noted the city "may take all action, including but limited to use of its police powers" to enforce the ban. The squabble was fallout from a "foam party" held at the armory last week, at which an outsized overzealous crowd of revelers began fighting with police. The incident resulted in minor injuries to three officers and seven arrests.

It was also cited for failure to have the prerequisite cabaret license for hosting live entertainment, such as the concerts and DJs Saturday's Festival of the Dead will host. The armory had previously applied for a license, but the city had not yet granted it. The licenses have only been obligatory since a new law requiring them was controversially adopted by the city earlier this year.

City buildings and fire department officials met with armory officials Friday morning, in an attempt to address immediate concerns with the building and save Saturday's event, Corts said.

The city took issues with certain operating certificates, as well as "minor issues" with some "technical equipment and code issues," Corts said, though he could not go into further detail about what some of the issues might have been. Some of the issues were remedied immediately on Friday, and others will be addressed in the "near future."

Whether the armory will run into trouble with other events on its calendar is still uncertain. The cabaret license for the building will now likely require an amendment including further information about the facility's security and how the management of the building might affect quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods, Jeffery Jamison, the director of the city's Division of Buildings and Regulatory Compliance, told the Times Union on Thursday. The license may also require a new public hearing after last weekend's ruckus, he said.

"We'll continue to work with the city to ensure all future events will go on as planned," said Corts.

Lenore Granich-Berghela, the organizer for Saturday's Festival of the Dead, was "ecstatic" that the 11th-hour deal had prevented a lockout on Saturday.

She only had one complaint: "Now I have to decorate in 12 hours what I was supposed to decorate in three days!" she said.

Granich-Berghela stood to lose over $5,000 of her personal money if the event had been cancelled, due to prepaid ads and merchandise, as well as no-cancel contracts with vendors and musicians. The $28-per-ticket fundraiser features different themes in each of the armory's ballrooms, as well as live music and performers.

"The armory bent over backwards to get everything that they needed done," she said. "The city and the armory both went out of the way to help."